Stranded (23 page)

At the slope descending into the trench, the weight of the deer took charge. It tumbled into Jake and sent him and the cat somersaulting. The flies lifted in an angry buzz and resettled. There was no getting away from them. Fresh blood gushed from the wounds on his shoulders. He stood, but fell to his knees and vomited. Hail the conquering hero.

He dropped the animals outside the cave door. Blood soaked his shirt, plastering it to his back. Someone needed to sew him up before the flies became the victors.

Mercifully, the cave door was open. He didn’t have to work the pulley, just crawl through once he got his gear off. “Hello?” His voice was barely a whisper. With painstaking effort he peeled off the sword and bayonets. Somewhere along the path, he had dropped the axe.

“Betty?” he croaked. “Eve? Crystal?”

No answer. He crawled inside and found the cave empty. Dimly, he recalled their plan to go to the Japanese garden this morning.

He staggered to his feet and leaned against the wall to thwart the flies that had followed him inside. The fight with the leopard had taken him to his limit. Getting back to the cave had pushed the limit further. No way was he going to make it to the garden for help.

Sleep. He lurched toward the sleeping hall but crumpled to the floor before he got as far as the table. The coolness was a shock to his skin. He rolled onto his back to let it soothe the fire in his shoulder blades and legs.

A shriek cut the air. Crystal scurried into the cave. “There’s a—”

“’S okay,” he interrupted. “They’re dead.” He pushed himself up to a sitting position. Crystal’s shape blurred in the light of the doorway. He blinked, but she stayed fuzzy.

“’M hurt—need help. Get”—Jake wracked his brain—“Eve.” Or was it Betty who mended their ragged shirts and shorts? The room spun. “Hur-ry.”

Crystal sprinted out the door. She shrieked again as she passed the animals. It hurt too much or he would have laughed. He sure loved that little girl.

So tired. He closed his eyes, felt himself topple. Didn’t matter. What he needed was sleep.

Stupid flies. He slapped at the air.

“Jake?” Eve scanned the interior of the cave, impatient for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Her chest heaved from the mad dash down the mountainside. Would she even hear him over her thundering heartbeat? Crystal had said he was on the floor. On the floor! That alone said her help was urgent.

The murmur of blowflies led her to him. Nasty things! She grabbed the broom and swatted at them until they rose in counterattack. Spying Jake folded sideways on the floor, she cried out and beat furiously at them. They circled and came back to the fray, but her intensity finally won out.

“Jake!” She dropped beside him and probed for a pulse in his neck. The blood on the leopard’s carcass outside told her the cat wasn’t the only victim.

He was alive, but his heartbeat was faint. “Jake, help me.” She slung his left arm across her shoulders and pulled his chest off the floor. His head wobbled. “Help me, Jake. We need to get you up.”

He stirred, raised his head. “’N my back. Need t’sew my back.”

Her stomach
jumped in protest. She was no surgeon. “Let’s get you to the table and see what you’re talking about.”

She fell on top of him at the first attempt to raise him. His yelp told her his injuries were more than scratches. Her arms and chest came away sticky with blood. She didn’t dare wait for Betty and Crystal to arrive to help her.

On the second try, Jake staggered to his feet but toppled her. She rose quickly and supported him in a slow shuffle to the table. As gently as she could, she lowered him onto the table on his stomach and helped him crawl all the way onto the bamboo slats.

The firelight flickered on shirt and shorts soaked with blood. She’d have to cut away the back of his shirt to reveal his injuries. His shorts were already torn open at the legs. Her hands trembled as blood pooled onto the table between the slats. She had to hurry.

She poured the last of their drinking water into a pot, set it on the coals to boil, and made a quick mental list: disinfect needles and fishline in case she needed to sew him up. Also boil something to clean his wounds. His shirt. She would use that since there was no other cloth available.

No need to disinfect a knife. She shuddered. At least she wouldn’t be cutting into him. Sewing him up had to be better, if that was what was required. She cut a length of fishline, dropped it into the pot of water along with several needles, and steeled herself to slice away his bloody shirt.

He’d said his injuries were on his back, but where on his back? The shirt was matted to his skin. None of it looked bloodier than any other part. She settled on cutting the side and shoulder seams to remove the shirt, first from his chest, then from his back. That would give her two pieces of cloth to work with.

When she tugged the front part of his shirt free, his body was deadweight, his breathing steady. Good. If he was unconscious, he wouldn’t feel her peel off the back part stuck to his injuries.

Tears streamed from her eyes as she nudged the material away from his spine and shoulders, only to send new blood prickling through the old. “Oh, Jake! Look at you! First the dog, now a cat!”

She fetched the needles and fishline from the steaming water and dropped in the two pieces of Jake’s shirt. The water burst into brilliant crimson. How long before they were disinfected? After a restless minute, she fished out one piece, let it cool briefly, and gingerly bathed Jake’s back and rump. She alternated the cloths, washing and rinsing, washing and rinsing until at last she uncovered the four wounds.

The scratches on his buttocks had stopped bleeding, but not the wounds on his shoulder blades. She threaded a needle, took a deep breath, an
d―
as fast as she coul
d―
sewed the slashes closed. She willed Jake not to wake up.
How can you believe in a God who let this happen to you?
Her whole body shook by the time she sopped up the blood on the table and spread the two rinsed cloths over his sutures to keep the flies off.

“We’re here.” Crystal poked her head into the cave.

She’d forgotten about Betty and Crystal. Her world had narrowed to Jake’s mauled back and the bloody needle and thread pinched between her thumb and forefinger. Had it been minutes or hours? “I’m at the table.” Her voice trembled in sync with her body.

“Eve?” Betty crawled in after Crystal and got to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“No.” She choked back tears. “I had to sew him up. The leopard got him bad. Really bad, really deep.” She looked down at her hands. Jake’s blood had stained them pink. “I’ve never sewn up a person before.” In spite of herself, she broke into sobs.

“Run and get water, Crystal. You don’t need to cry too.” Betty handed the bucket to the child and hobbled over to Eve. “You were brave to do that, very brave. I don’t think I could have done it.”

Eve blubbered as Betty put both arms around her. Betty’s frail body was warm and smelled of flowers and earth and sweaty underarms. Eve clasped her tightly to her chest and sobbed.

When Crystal returned with the bucket, Eve dribbled clean water over her hands and splashed the tears from her face while Betty and Crystal checked on Jake.

Betty lifted the cloths one at a time and peered under them. “Looks like you did a good job. From what I can see, the bleeding has stopped and he’s sleeping just fine. When he wakes up, we can move him to his bed. Doesn’t look like he’ll want to sit on that backside for a while.”

In spite of herself, Eve laughed.

“Let’s get at those animals now and reward this poor man for his wounds.” Betty patted Eve’s arm. “Are you up to it, dearie, or do you want to rest?”

“Anything to get rid of these flies.”

They went outside and examined the animals. The leopard’s paws and claws were red with Jake’s blood, but there was none on its mouth. She shivered at the size of its fangs. Jake wouldn’t be here if the leopard had sunk those ivories into him. “It jumped onto his back but didn’t bite him.”

Betty held up the katana sword. “Look at the hilt, all chewed up. Jake must have stopped those teeth with it somehow.” She dropped it and swatted away flies to pick up the two bayonets. “Completely covered in blood. That’s how he killed it, with these.” She thumped the leopard’s side with a bayonet. The flies heaved upward like a cape caught in the wind, giving a momentary glimpse of the carcass before they resettled. “There, in its sides.”

“So what do we do with them?” Eve stepped away from the incessant buzz, from the two mounds of insect-crawling-over-insect. “I don’t know a thing about
how to skin a cat or butcher a deer.” But she did know how to pitch the whole mess over the cliff.

“We’ll do our best, just like you did with sewing up Jake. Crystal, fetch something to keep the flies off us while Eve and I haul Jake’s prizes down to the beach.” Betty set her jaws in a tight clench against the swarm of flies, snagged the cat’s tail in one hand, her cane in the other, and set off at a careful limp down the rocky path to the cove.

The deer’s antlers stuck out of the packed flies like the mast of a ship in a storm-tossed ocean. Eve sighed. There was nothing to do but grab ahold of the prongs, swat a windshield-wiper space in front of her eyes, and trudge after the determined old woman.

“You and Jake can make moccasins from the deer hide, and that shirt of yours has faced its last mending. I expect Jake will need new clothes now too.” Betty sounded as gleeful as if they were heading off on a shopping spree.

Crystal loped onto the beach, dragging a palm frond almost twice her size. She stuck the woody stem into the sand, stood the branch upright, and waved the frond sideways, back and forth over a wide swathe of sand. Clever. Both animals fit under the child’s gyrating fan.

With the flies effectively distracted, Eve and Betty skinned the pelt from the leopard and the hide from the deer. Betty and Crystal then scraped the flesh off the skins and stretched them out to dry while Eve took on the task of cutting up the deer and spearing the meat onto branches for roasting. She and Crystal disposed of the carcasses while Betty set the meat to cook. They’d never eat it all before it spoiled, but Eve was glad for the challenge.

She checked on Jake every chance she got. He never moved, never shifted his position on the table. His stillness jammed her heart into her throat every time until her shaking fingers found his pulse and she could breathe and swallow again. When they woke him to transfer him to his bed, she examined his sutures. Every place she had poked the needle was swollen and red.

What if she hadn’t sufficiently sterilized the needle and fishline? What if, instead, she had infected him?

They had no antibiotics. Nothing. Nothing whatsoever to help him.

Crystal trailed Betty down the dark, sleeping corridor. She helped her aunt crawl into bed and then climbed into her own. There had been no sound from Jake as she passed his ledge. Her lower lip trembled. For three days she’d been allowed only glimpses of him as he lay asleep, and she sorely missed him. What if he died, and she never got to say good-bye, never got to tell him she loved him? Eve, in particular, had been watchful as an owl. There’d been no chance to sneak in even a little love pat on the way to bed.

What she needed was a plan.

She began at breakfast. “Mmmm, this fruit is juicy—you always find the ripest, Eve. And your venison stew last night was scrumptious, Aunt Betty.” That ought to win her some favor.

Next, do something special to help them out. “Want me to clean these?” At the stream, she washed out the two cloths from Jake’s shirt that Eve and Aunt Betty used to cool his fever. No matter how hard she scrubbed, she couldn’t get rid of the bloodstains. Just touching the stains squashed her stomach into a hard lump.

But so far, so good. Now for the hardest part of her plan—getting around Eve the Owl to be alone with Jake for a few seconds.

She waited until they went to the beach for their morning mussel hunt. “Oh, I forgot to fill the water bucket when I took the cloths to the stream. Can I do it now?” Aunt Betty always put more water into the cauldron when she added the morning’s catch of mussels. She’d be grumpy about a delay.

Sure enough, her aunt huffed. “For goodness’ sake, child, go ahead. Don’t dillydally like you usually do.”

“I won’t.” She wanted to dash to the cave and get the bucket before Eve could protest, but it might look suspicious. She turned to Eve, who was ankle-deep in the cove, hands buried in the water.

Eve straightened. Crystal’s heart pounded while the Owl hesitated. “Don’t bother Jake,” she finally said.

“I won’t. I promise.” Crystal forced herself to trudge at her normal pace across the beach and up the rocky incline to the cave. A sideways glance showed Eve still standing straight and tall, hands dripping water, staring after her. Crystal’s backbone prickled under the hot gaze. Maybe she shouldn’t carry out her plan after all.

She crawled into the cave and was out in seconds with the empty bucket. Should she wave to say, “See how fast I was?” or should she act like it was no big deal and just walk across the trench? A peek revealed that, sure enough, Eve hadn’t moved. Well, let her stand there and watch all she wanted, nothing was going to happen.

At the stream she filled the bucket half full. Better two or three trips a day than trying to lug a full bucket. Even with half a bucket, she always spilled water while climbing down the steep hill to the trench. Back home, her grandma and grandpa would have squawked about the spill, but here everyone was grateful just to have water.

She was halfway across the trench before she bothered to look down at the beach. Both Aunt Betty and Eve had their backs to the cave. Crystal held her breath and walked faster. If they didn’t look up, they wouldn’t know she was in the cave, much less how long she was in it.

At the entrance, she crawled in, turned back around, and tugged the bucket into the cave, oh-so-careful to not let it scrape against the rock. No telling how good Eve the Owl’s ears were. The thought made her stomach jitter. She’d better hurry, just in case.

No need to wait for her eyes to adjust to the dark. Just feel her way along the wall to the sleeping hall, and Jake’s ledge was first.

His breathing was soft, like he was blowing feathers. She restrained a giggle. Her fingers found his head—good, his face was toward her. She could make out his form now, stretched on his stomach along the ledge. “I love you, Jake,” she whispered. She leaned forward to kiss him. To steady herself, she placed her hand on his back.

Jake woke with a shriek. “Leopard!”

Crystal’s heart leaped to her throat. She jumped back as Jake tumbled off the ledge.
Thud
. The air left his lungs in a great whoosh. A million seconds went by. Then she heard him gasp the air back in.

What had she done? The jitters she’d calmed moments ago exploded like the mine Aunt Betty had stepped on. Crystal fled. Her shin hit the water bucket hard enough to tip it clanking to the floor.

She didn’t know she was crying until she flung herself into her aunt’s arms.

“Sweetie, what’s the matter?”

Eve splashed in from the cove, her steps churning the shallow water into miniature geysers. “What happened? Is Jake okay?”

Crystal cringed. The broken promise, the lie she’d told on purpose—she had done the unspeakable, and Eve’s eyes were searching out her very soul. She couldn’t let her find out. “I don’t want Jake to die!” she wailed. “I love him!”

Eve’s glower softened. “He won’t die. We won’t let him. He’ll be okay, you’ll see.”

Crystal buried her face into Aunt Betty’s shoulder and sobbed. What had she done? Oh, what had she done to her beloved Jake? He was lying on the floor, and she had just left him there. She should tell them about it, but she couldn’t, she just couldn’t.

Jake got to his feet and groped his way to the table. No sitting down, the way the slashes in his thighs burned. The fall had slammed him onto his back. Had any of the sutures ripped open? He felt like someone had poured gasoline over him and set it on fire. Flames on the inside of him too. His mouth and tongue were an ash heap. He needed water.

He shuffled to the spot where they kept the water bucket. It lay empty on its side. He rubbed his face. Hot. Hot all over. Where was everybody? Outside? One of them would get him a drink.

Stooping to crawl through the door sent his head spinning. He flattened himself against the floor and absorbed the coolness of the stone into his bare chest and cheek. When the dizziness passed, he grasped the bucket handle and squirmed outside on his belly.

Fire licked his shoulder blades and buttocks as he clambered to his feet. He gasped bursts of air in and out of his lungs. Nausea rose in a clog from his stomach to choke his throat and the inside of his nose. He threw up on himself, unwilling to test his balance by bending over.

A chill swept over him. He leaned against the cliff, soaked the morning’s soft heat into his palms and forearms, the side of his face, his heaving ribs. Finally his breathing calmed. It struck him that although his wounds burned, the torment from the last few days of feeling skinned alive had left. He remembered buddies in Nam screaming from stitches received with no pain relievers. Now he understood.

The shivers subsided, but a headache landed like a swarm of bees taking up residence inside his skull. He recognized the symptom. A dehydration headache. He had to have that water.

A glance over his shoulder located Betty, Eve, and Crystal. They were walking with their backs to him far down the beach, where the corner jutted into the ocean. They wouldn’t hear if he yelled.

He’d have to get the water himself.

Bracing with one hand against the cliffside, he crouched and picked up the water bucket. A wave of nausea swooped over him, but disappeared when he straightened.

He inhaled a deep breath. Atta boy, he could do this.

At the end of the beach, the women stopped to give Betty a rest. Crystal plopped down where the waves teased the shoreline. She squiggled her toes deeper and deeper into the wet sand. They’d get completely buried, and then a wave would come and dig them out and she had to start all over again. It was a contest. Her toes against the waves—sorta like her and Eve.

She just knew Eve was going to dig out what happened with Jake. Dig out the lie. Dig out the promise Crystal had made knowing she wasn’t going to keep it. And now she was going to get caught. She was the toes. Eve was the waves.

It was obvious what Eve was doing to catch her. First Eve asked Aunt Betty questions about places she’d traveled to and which places she liked best. Busy talk. Talk to give Crystal time to calm down. Time for Eve to set the trap. Crystal knew it as sure as if she’d watched Eve put the cheese on the mousetrap and pull the spring back.

Then, sure enough, Eve asked Crystal the same questions. Where had she been and what had she liked and why? The questions were little crumbs for the mouse to nibble to get it over to the trap. And just like the mouse, Crystal went after the crumbs, knowing what was happening, wanting with all her mousy heart to resist, but oh-so-wishing to please Eve that she couldn’t stop.

Eve stood and looked at Aunt Betty. “How about if Crystal comes with me to pick fruit for lunch?”

Crystal shivered. Eve had got her to the mousetrap and was pulling back the spring.

“That’s fine, as long as you help me to the cave so I can check on Jake.” And Aunt Betty was playing right along.

Would he still be on the floor where she’d left him?

They got to the cave. Between thinking about how she’d made Jake fall and how Eve was going to make her tell everything, Crystal scrambled as fast as she could up to the little plateau, and then on up toward the Japanese garden. Maybe she could think of a way to distract Eve’s attention. Fall, maybe, and act like she was hurt. But no, that would be another lie. She was through with lies. She just wanted to get away with this one so Eve wouldn’t despise her and never trust her again.

Crystal walked faster, but Eve stayed right beside her, talking and talking, all friendly-like. Crystal’s ears were so stuffed with the tears she held back that she could hardly hear the words. But this was the big cheese talk, all right—all this kindness to lead her straight into the trap. Then,
snap!
the spring would pop and she’d have to confess. She began to sniffle, just thinking about it.

Aunt Betty shouted their names, and she halted. Eve did, too, and they ran back to the cave. They stopped on top of the little plateau and peered down. Aunt Betty stood outside the cave entrance, yelling their names until she and Eve showed up. “Jake’s gone! He’s bleeding!” She pointed at the trench and began hobbling along it with her cane. “There’s a trail, see?”

“Stay there, Betty. Crystal and I will find him and bring him back.” Eve climbed down the plateau to the trench, but Crystal stayed where she was. She scoured the trench ahead of her aunt until she saw Jake at the very end.

“There he is!” He was lying like a big crooked
X
in the long grass. “Jake! Jake!” She plunged down the plateau and ran toward him, screaming his name.

Eve ran ahead of her, but suddenly froze in a dead halt. Fear closed Crystal’s throat. She caught up with Eve and stopped too. She couldn’t move. All she could do was stare.

Jake lay on his stomach. One arm was crooked over his face; the other was stretched out beside him, fingers clasping the bucket handle. Swarming over him was a mass of huge, blue-green, metallic-colored blowflies. They were packed in heavy clumps over the stitches on his back. Crystal gasped when she saw flies crawling in and out of Jake’s nose and mouth.

One tiny, little lie, and this is where it led.